Is NTFS on the way out? [LWN.net]

Is NTFS on the way out?

Posted Jan 24, 2026 17:00 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Is NTFS on the way out? by willy
Parent article: Filesystem medley: EROFS, NTFS, and XFS

It already change it back and Windows 11 can create it and even boot from it.

But after two flip-flops we don't know where would it go next…

It's not like Apple who just said “we are going APFS” and just did that. Granted, HFS+ was a crazy unstable pile of hacks on top of hacks, at this point, thus abandoned it was much easier that for Microsoft to abandon NTFS which is simply bad, not awful.

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Is NTFS on the way out?

Posted Jan 25, 2026 20:52 UTC (Sun) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (5 responses)

So with ReFS, maybe Windows will be able to delete or even just rename a file in use in 10-20 years time? Who knows, software updates might not take 30 minutes anymore.

Unless Windows first becomes what "DOS" or COBOL is today. Even _gaming_ is under serious threat now, who would have thought?

Is NTFS on the way out?

Posted Jan 25, 2026 22:55 UTC (Sun) by garyguo (subscriber, #173367) [Link] (1 responses)

That was possible for a while now in Windows, when `FILE_DISPOSITION_POSIX_SEMANTICS` is specified to delete a file. I think it is even the default in newer version of Windows.

Is NTFS on the way out?

Posted Jan 26, 2026 5:10 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

Indeed, it looks like this was changed with very little fanfare:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60424732/did-the-beha...

Is NTFS on the way out?

Posted Jan 25, 2026 23:16 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

> Who knows, software updates might not take 30 minutes anymore.

How is that even related? Android and macOS do that, too — and they are not using NTFS.

They all are just using process that is less error-prone (and is actually even recommended by many Linux distributions, just not enforced) instead of giving the user rope and hoping that s/he not hung himself or herself.

Is NTFS on the way out?

Posted Jan 26, 2026 5:15 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

It's related because when you cannot delete files in use then you need to stop, delete and restart processes using the files. And when you are not 100% sure, then you need to restart pretty much everything.

It may not be the only upgrade limitation but it's an important one.

> Android and macOS do that, too

"How is that even related?"

Is NTFS on the way out?

Posted Jan 26, 2026 18:11 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> It's related because when you cannot delete files in use then you need to stop,

Or you nick an idea or two from the 80s ... and rename the old file in place so you can replace it.

You still need to reboot to ensure everything is running the upgrade, and then clean up all the old files, but that's not too hard ...

Cheers,
Wol